[paisawalla]

As a developer, I would get pretty upset and demoralized if someone came and periodically reverted all my commits. Imagine if I actually had to risk my life to make those "commits"?

It's not hard to see why they stay in the car and keep driving if the arrests don't even lead to prosections.

[otikik]

I mean, they could have helped the guy who was bleeding out.

Nevertheless, “risking their life” is what their Job description is. If they are not willing to do it then they should not have been given a badge.

[pydry]

They probably should but according to Warren v. District of Columbia they dont.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Frankly, if your commits were being loudly criticized as harming/killing people then you have no right to sulk off and stop doing your job because they were reverted. And it also doesn’t excuse you to feel entitled to remain employed while you stopped doing your job. If you felt that way, quit so someone who is willing to do the work can get hired.

Additionally, being a cop is a pretty safe job! It’s not even top 10 most dangerous jobs. Most injuries are because of the cops own traffic violations or, more recently, Covid.

[paisawalla]

> Frankly, if your commits were being loudly criticized as harming/killing people then you have no right

No, my commits are perfectly fine, as are the vast majority of my peers' code. Only an extremely small number of complaints are generated, across a number of commits many magnitudes larger -- and not all of those complaints are of equal merit.

> If you felt that way, quit so someone who is willing to do the work can get hired.

Unfortunately, recruiting is down across most (maybe all) major cities. Maybe the would-be recruits see it differently than you -- with nothing to stake -- do?

[SamoyedFurFluff]

Unfortunately, your commits aren’t fine, very likely you are covering for your murdering peer and deserve equal criticism for doing so. It’s well known that cops that fight corruption in the police force end up forced out, institutionalized under false pretenses, or straight up executed by other cops. This leaves the only police remaining the corrupt ones, either perpetuating corruption first hand or second handedly watching it go down and not doing anything.

Unfortunately, the matter of fact is, the police force decide to stop enforcing laws when they’re criticized for problems the police force caused. It’s childish. Police steal more money than actual amounts of theft in the country through civil forfeiture. Police are more likely to commit domestic violence. Police hired defense to argue that they don’t have any obligation to protect individuals or intervene in crime, instead of punishing cops who shirk their work. And then when any cops are critiqued the entire force stops doing their jobs and blames the critics for it.

[paisawalla]

I'm going to steer this conversation back on track, and not chase down these non-facts you're asserting.

The question is: why aren't police making as many arrests (commits). And the answer I'm proposing is: because DAs are reverting their work.

They are not reverting their work only in the cases of supposed police misconduct, so your counterpoint about bad commits is a diversion from the point. The DAs are not doing their job because they believe, frankly, that criminal justice as constructed cannot work. They don't believe a lot of crimes should be prosecuted even. For example, in DC something like 60% of gun possession cases are dropped. In Chicago and Philly it's higher than 90%. That has nothing to do with police brutality (bad commits) [0]

(And btw, these are the same people who think guns should be banned flat out)

What that means is the PM (district attorney) has the developers working on a product they have no intention of shipping (actual justice). Police are people too, and nobody is going to do purposeless work. You wouldn't at your job, and neither would they at their much more dangerous and stressful job. Nor is anyone in a great rush to sign up for this job, despite offered salaries being very high right now.

Police misconduct is a distraction from this point, unless you think 90% of gun possession charges were generated abusively -- which would be a completely innumerate claim.

0: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/03/29/us-attorn...

[smcl]

Also things like cops shooting other cops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKEsx1hcRjU

[scarface74]

Police “risking their lives” is not backed by evidence.

Only 130 officers died in the line of duty in 2021.

https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-police-officers-die-i...

[ashwagary]

Most police officers die from driving accidents.

[smcl]

If we're going with the developer metaphor, it's more like you're making a bunch of low quality PRs that aren't adding any value to the product and the maintainer is choosing not to merge some of them.

I don't think it's a suitable metaphor though.

[josephcsible]

It's more like you're a pre-2012 glibc contributor who's making a bunch of high quality PRs that would add significant value to the product but Ulrich Drepper is choosing not to merge most of them for no good reason.

[smcl]

That's a extremely naive way to look at police. But if you think the police do "high quality" anything then you're probably not the kind of person who could be persuaded otherwise.

[jwestbury]

How does Rubocop fit into this?